
QUAKER HILL 

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S E ^ 1 E S 



IX. Blbert 5* Hkin 
B tCribute 



BY 



REV. WARREN H. WILSON 




flass F \ 2- J 
Rnnk .Q 12. ^N J 




ALBERT JOHN AKIN 
BORN 1S03, DIED 1903 



ALBERT J. AKIN 

A TRIBUTE 



REV. WARREN H. WILSON 



READ AT THE FIFTH ANNUAI, MEETING OF THE 

QUAKER HIIvI. CONFERENCE, AUGUST 

THE FOURTEENTH, NINETEEN 

HUNDRED AND THREE 



Published by the Quaker Hill Conference Associa- 
tion, Quaker Hill, New York 
1903 



Albert John Akin. 

The death of Albert Akin came upon 
the community of which he was the first 
citizen as a great calamity, both because of 
the personal loss, and because of the other 
deaths of which it was representative. We 
think of his death as one in the passing 
away of a Quaker Hill generation, whose 
departure means a change of the whole 
aspect of the community. We will never 
again see the face of John James Vander- 
burgh, of David Gould, of Mrs. Bancroft, 
of David and of Daniel Wing, of Roby 
Osborn, of Anne Hayes, of Admiral and 
Mrs. Worden, or of Albert Akin. Their 
deaths, coming in years not far separated 
in the annals of this quiet community, have 
saddened all hearts; and the loss of them 
all is remembered in the death of Mr. Akin. 
When the last of those who had sat in the 
Old Meeting House, before the meeting 
was divided in 1828, shall have passed away, 
then will have gone forever a loved and 
honored generation, a time rich in traditions; 
and with that passing will have ended the 
peculiar and unworldly history of Quaker 
Hill. Whether the spirit and life of the 
Hill can be carried on to later generations 
wall depend upon those who are gathered 
here tonight. 

They were a generation of ladies and 



gentlemen; of perfect culture, though bred 
in a farming community not even assembled 
into a village; of free and ingenuous char- 
acter enriched from a choice and treasured 
history, and possessed of a common spirit; 
which, although it showed itself in various 
directions, proved its agreement and unity 
during these last twenty-five years in the 
enterprises of which Albert Akin was the 
patron and promoter. Theirs was a time 
in which men still cherished their past and 
that of their fathers. These men and wom- 
en had seen the generation before them, 
who believed themselves a peculiar people. 
They had spoken with those who had 
known Washington and his heroic officers. 
They had themselves, from this hilltop, 
looked upon the development of the Ameri- 
can nation with the mature and wise inter- 
est of those occupying choice seats at a 
great public contest. They were philoso- 
phers, not all agreeing in one system, but 
all having looked the great issue quietly in 
the face. They had all come to conclu- 
sions. They had all resolved upon a way 
of life and had the grace to live it. The 
life of every one of that generation had a 
meaning and a genius of its own. Of all of 
them it may be said that they had thought 
more than the present generation and 
hurried less. And of the men and women 
of that time the acknowledged chief was 
Albert Akin, whose philosophy became a 
scheme for the good of the community, 
and his thinking a benefaction for the 
future. 

He belonged to no one generation of 

G 



the four through whose Hves he lived. 
He made more friends in the last ten 
years of his life than perhaps in any pre- 
ceding decade. He spent his last years 
planning for generations yet unborn, who 
should succeed him and his fathers in this 
immortal community. We celebrate today, 
by this meeting of the Conference found- 
ed by him, the hundreth anniversary of his 
birth. 

"Albert Akin endowed," said one who 
knew him, " not a college, not a charitable 
institution; but he endowed a community." 

His father, Judge Albro Akin, was a man 
of mark in his time. At once the leading 
business man of this community, at that 
time a commercial center of importance, 
and Associate Judge for twenty years of the 
Court of Common Pleas, he commanded a 
wide influence. He was a man of great 
force of will, physical vigor and industry. 

By his first wife, Pauline Vanderburgh, 
whose father, Col. James Vanderburgh of 
Beekman. had often entertained Washing- 
ton, Albro Akin had three children, Albert 
John the oldest, Almira who married 
Joshua Jones, and Helen Maria, who mar- 
ried John W. Taylor of New York. Each 
of these daughters left descendants. By 
his second wife, Sarah Merritt, who lived 
eight years, he had no children. By his 
third wife, Jemima Thorn Jacacks, he had 
seven children. Mary, Cornelia, William 
Henry, Gulielma, Amanda, who married 
Dr. Chas. Stearns, Anna, who married 
William H. Ogden and Caroline, who 
married Adolph Wilm-Beets. 



Albro Akin died in 1854 and is buried in 
Pawling Cemetery. He had been the fifth 
in the direct line of the oldest sons of the 
oldest sons of his family, from the first 
John Akin of whom there is record, born 
in Scotland. 

One hundred years ago to-day, on August 
14th, 1803, there was born on Quaker Hill, 
to Albro Akin and Pauline Vanderburgh 
his wife, a son, their first born, whom they 
named John because there liad been a John 
Akin from the first generation, and Albert 
after Albert Gallatin, at that time Secre- 
tary of the Treasury of the United States, 
and a friend of his father. 

Oa the thirteenth of last January died 
Albert John Akin, in his hundreth year, 
leaving no children. I do not know that 
he left an enemy, though he had not failed 
to offend more than one person in his long 
and aggressive life. It is his high honor 
that the deepest grief for his passing away 
was felt among those w^ho earned his wages; 
and among the poor, who universally hon- 
ored him. He lived to receive the affec- 
tion and respect of his neighbors and to 
value it above almost any other tribute. 
He was to have been here to-day, and 
earnestly desired to live at least till this 
Summer. We were to have honored him 
with an elaborate review of his century, 
and with tributes from eloquent and loving 
voices who would gladly have spoken upon 
the themes and ideals he loved to hear dis- 
cussed. It would have been a day of ora- 
tions, tableaus, of calm review and far- 



8 



sighted prophecy. But he is not here. 
We can only pay tribute in silence to him 
and his time. The occasion is a greater 
one than if he had been aliye; but our com- 
memoration of it must be diminished in 
submission to the stronger hand of death. 

One hundred years he lived. And his 
century was the one of all the centuries in 
which he would have most desired to live, 
the most changeful and momentous of all 
the centuries this gray old world has seen. 
Not since the invention of fire, says Alfred 
Russell Wallace, has the w^orld and the life 
of man gone through such changes as it 
experienced in the Nineteenth Century. 
Between 1803 and 1903 the manner of life 
of the civilized man took on a new aspect 
altogether. The saddle and the stage 
coach were exchanged for the railway car- 
riage and the trolley car and the Pullman 
sleeper. The pen was succeeded b}^ the t^^pe- 
writer, the scythe and flail by the reaper, 
planter and all the machinery of the farm. 
Horse-speed was succeeded by the telegraph ; 
and the telephone cancels many of the fac- 
tors of distance. It was an age of travel 
and exploration of new^ worlds, of the ap- 
plication both of steam and electricity to 
use and to work, all to the acceleration of 
the progress of man. The ideas as to man- 
kind upon which the eighteenth century 
had theorized were by the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury made actual, in the effect of the inven- 
tive mind upon the w^hole life of mankind. 

Albert Akin lived through all this change 
and sympathized with it. He took part in 
it, not as an original mind, inventing or 



discovering, but as a seer, understanding 
and interpreting truly, and profiting by 
what he saw; preparing all the time the 
means whereby the coming era might be 
made serviceable to his own well beloved 
community at Quaker Hill. 

At his birth the United States were seven- 
teen in number; at his death, forty-eight. 
He was born the year in which the Louisi- 
ana territories were added to the United 
States, and he expended his greatest energy 
in investments, in enterprises which have 
had to do with the opening of the great 
West to trade. The foundation of his for- 
tune was laid in westward reaching rail- 
ways. He reaped some of his greatest 
gains from transcontinental roads which 
embody at once the expansion and consoli- 
dation of the nation; which in his life-time 
multiplied ten-fold in men, and fifteen-fold 
in acres. 

Mr. Akin was all his life an invalid. 
Since his twenty- fifth year he had to take 
drugs and medicines dail3^ When he was 
thirty he retired from business to the Hill, 
and later travelled, to restore his health. 
When he was fifty he walked with crutch 
or cane. At sixty he did not expect to live 
a year. At eighty he had lost the use of 
his lower limbs, and was condemned for a 
generation to use a wheel-chair. After he 
was ninety-five he broke his leg, and again 
the next year repeated the accident. But 
both fractures mended soundly. He died 
slowly, the splendid constitution resisting 
step by step the in-roads of disease. To 
the last day of his illness, he retained the 

10 



strong virile tone of his voice, and in his 
last delirium spoke like a young man. His 
brain was the last of him to die, remaining 
clear long after almost every organ was 
gone into dissolution. 

He was an amazement of physicians. 
He was a confusion of temperance reform- 
ers. As one said, "He had used tobacco 
for seventy-five years, brandy all his life, 
and morphine for the last twenty-five 
years." At his marriage he ceased to 
smoke and then often carried a cigar in his 
mouth, which he did not light for seventy 
years. 

Yet he was always temperate, and 
refused to increase the amount of any nar- 
cotics used. His strong will forbade, and 
his peculiar constitution seemed not to re- 
quire, the stimulus of enlarged doses. 

Spare and slender in build, abstemious 
in habits, active in mind and body, fond of 
the out door life, he reminded one of the 
recent Pope Leo XIII., who begged in his 
last illness for work to do, " because he was 
so weak, and the cure for weakness is 
activity." Both in Albert Akin and in 
Jane Williams, his wife, the principle was 
illustrated of the sustaining power there is 
for frail bodies in strength of will ; and of 
the long life there is for those who are de- 
termined. They lived long because they 
had a strong hold on life and work. They 
died, not of disease, nor for any other 
reason than that the physical machine 
wore out at a vital point. 

The events of Mr. Akin's life are not 
merely personal, but form almost a history 



11 



of the Hill, and are to some degree a nar- 
rative of the progress of the times. He 
was born to the privileges of an aristocrat. 
There were aristocrats then in the land. 
He came of a land-owning family, in this 
state which from the first was controlled 
by great landholders. His father furnished 
him with a common school education, com- 
pleted in academies in South East and in 
Red Hook. At twenty one, after two years 
spent in gaining business experience, he 
entered commercial life, with small capital, 
having Percival Seaman as partner. But 
the venture was not permanent. Mr. 
Akin's health failed, and he returned to 
his father's home. Thirty years of age 
found him farming two hundred acres 
again on this Hill, from which thereafter 
he never moved his residence for long. To 
the time of his death he proclaimed his faith 
in Quaker Hill climate for all fleshly ills, 
and cited his health and that of Mrs. Akin 
in proof of his claims which were certainly 
large. 

At the age of thirty-two he married Jane 
Williams of New York. It was a perfect 
union, of kindred spirits, devoted to one 
another and supplementing one another. 
Those who knew them both declared that 
in the success which attended Mrs. Akin's 
enterprises from the time of his marriage 
to the time of his death, his wife was a 
leading factor. To all observers she was a 
perfect wife, and to her husband she was 
all human society. I would not be a true 
recorder of Mr. Akin's life if I did not 
mention some of the hard things of his 

12 



character. He was not always gentle ; he 
was frequently imperious and harsh to 
those nearest him ; he was not too scrup- 
ulous in following his own interest in bus- 
iness. I mention these to put over against 
them his almost romantic attachment to 
his wife, and his care for her and fondness 
of her all the days of their sixty-five years 
together. 

Jane Williams Akin was content to be 
Albert Akin's wife. She was ambitious for 
him, and gave the whole of her mind and 
soul to the advancement and success of her 
husband in business ; in which success her 
influence is chiefly seen. She must have 
been a beautiful woman in her youth and 
she was a fine and high-bred lady in old 
age. And the heart of her husband trusted 
in her. 

The real beginning of Albert Akin's bus- 
iness Hfe was made on Quaker Hill in the 
thirties when he began to gather up the 
money of the neighborhood, upon loans, 
and invest it with his own in railroads. 
The lines from Albany to Schenectady, 
which later became a link in the New York 
Central's chain of railroads, first interested 
him ; and seeing the profit there was in 
such investment, he continued to borrow 
at a low per cent the money his neighbors 
made in raising fat cattle and hemp and in 
making hats, and to invest it at larger in- 
terest in railroads. 

The Harlem Railroad had in those years 
advanced as far as Croton Falls ; and there 
is a tradition of a man who with the aid of 
a fast team of horses drove from Quaker 

13 



Hill to that road in the morning, took train 
to the City, and came back to the Hill the 
same day, accomplishing the seeming im- 
possible. This railway had to face the 
danger of loss of its charter, unless it com- 
plete its lines to a northern point by a cer- 
tain date. Mr. Akin was one of the men 
enlisted in its interest. He secured money 
for the work of completion. Ties for the 
railway he distributed along the proposed 
line. Availing himself of a promise made 
by the head of the road, he created the 
station and village of Pawling, by hauling a 
house across the fiat then known as "Goose- 
town", with twenty yoke of oxen, to serve 
as an eating-house and station. Later, he 
was interested in the opening of a hotel in 
the village which soon grew up around 
the station. 

The Pawling National Bank was founded 
by his leadership, and he was for many 
years its President, giving to the institution 
a high character in harmony with his own 
conservative methods in finance. 

Mr. Akin was during his long life in this 
place very often made the trustee or ex- 
ecutor of estates. Men recognized both his 
integrity and his perfect business judg- 
ment ; and it was his boast that no moneys 
thus intrusted to him were ever unprofit- 
ably invested. He thus had to do at differ- 
ent times with the Kirby, Morgan, Merritt 
and other estates. 

Albert Akin was twenty-five years old 
when the oblong meeting was disrupted, 
and the sympathies of his family w^ere with 
the dominant party which retained the 

14 



meeting house. I have never learned that 
he had at that time any interest in rehgious 
matters. From that time until the found- 
ing of Akin Hall, in 1880, there succeeds 
a period of fifty years which a student of 
Quaker Hill's history has called "The 
Dark Age." Nothing seems to have hap- 
pened of local moment. One of the rare 
reminiscences I have been able to glean is 
a sweet story, told me by Anne Hayes, of 
the social events of an informal character, 
in the years succeeding Albert Akin's mar- 
riage. He used to drive about and collect 
the young people — by which expression 
were designated, then as now, all under 
fifty — and convey the ladies to the Akin 
homestead, where they would sew and talk 
all the afternoon. Then at night their 
swains would collect, husbands and lovers 
and men of all degrees, and the evening 
would be spent in delightful fashion, never 
to be forgotten by those present. In the 
meetings of this sort Albert and Jane Akin 
were the leaders in the thirties and I sup- 
pose in the forties. The history of the Hill 
in that time, except as it is told in Mrs. 
Wanzer's sketch of her father's life and in 
Mrs. Steam's paper to-morrow, is all but un- 
recorded. 

I have been told that Mr. Akin's health 
necessitated his retirement to the Hill from 
more active business about 1880. At any 
rate he was thenalmost eighty years of age; 
and no doubt he spent his summers here, 
and as much more of his time as he could. 
Then came the founding of Akin Hall, 
of Mizzen-top Hotel, and the employment 

15 



of Mr. Ryder as minister, or as he was 
called, the "Agent." In the creation of 
the Akin Hall Association Mr. Akin was 
undoubtedly inspired in chief part by Mr. 
Cyrus Swan, who had been closely associ- 
ated with Matthew Vassar, and with 
Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. For 
more than a decade after that foundation 
Mr. Swan was his attorney and active ad- 
viser. The plans and details of the organ- 
ization of the Hall are in general those sug- 
gested by Mr. Swan, and he w^as the his- 
torian of the events attending its inaugura- 
tion. 

Mr. Akin's life is not one of great 
events, nor of many critical occasions. It is 
simply the long life of a careful, patient, 
live man. The greatest thing one may say 
of him was that he always was alive, till 
the day of his death. He never became 
old: but he did, according to that excellent 
distinction, become older each year, be- 
cause he was always young. He delighted 
in the young, preferred their company, and 
gave them favor which he denied to the 
old. It was the joy of his late years to 
think that he had gained some of the affec- 
tion of those who were 3^oung in years, or 
at least in spirit. 

In all the years he lived on the Hill he 
had to do with every movement and was 
in touch with every person on the Hill. 
He made himself a party to every public 
interest. When the building of the Hotel 
was suggested, he put himself at the head 
of the movement, invested the most money 
in it, and later obtaining entire control, 

16 



deeded it to his Akin Hall foundation. 
When the library enterprise was broached, 
which has grown into Akin Free Library, 
he organized and incorporated the institu- 
tion required, endowed it generously ; later 
reorganized it, upon legal advice ; thus 
accepting ideas from Admiral Worden, 
William B. Wlieeler, Cyrus Swan, Judge 
Barnard, and others of his neighbors and 
contributing his own patient and unflagging 
executive faculty. When it was thought 
best, in 1892, to continue the church ser- 
vices through the winter under the leader- 
ship of Mrs. Wheeler and later of Miss 
Monohan, and the growth of the Sunday 
school and permanent congregation seemed 
to require the employment of a resident 
pastor, Mr. Akin acquiesced ; at first as a 
follower, but steadily and increasingly as a 
leader, he identified himself more and more 
every year until his death, with the reli- 
gious life of Akin Hall and Christ's Church. 
He was a good leader, for he confessed 
himself a follower in the enterprise which 
he was in a position absolutely to control. 
He eagerly availed himself of the sugges- 
tions of others, took a quiet and lowly 
place with entire dignity, and exerted 
without arbitrariness a determining influ- 
ence. 

The glory of Albert Akin's life is not 
that to any great degree he originated 
the changes of his century in the 
world outside and in Quaker Hill. It is 
that he understood them, welcomed them 
and knew how to make use of them. He 
was an optimist. He was a believer in the 

17 



future, because an observer of the present. 
He was something of a seer. Probably no 
remark of his life was better representa- 
tive of his way of thinking than his reply 
to those who advised against the action of 
the Pawling Bank, which under his Presi- 
dency invested during the Civil War in 
Government bonds to the amount of twice 
its capital. "But, Mr. Akin," they said, 
' ' What if we should get whipped by the 
Confederates?" "But we won't get 

whipped," said Mr. Akin, "and if we 
should, our money would be worth nothing 
to us without a government." In such 
faith and optimism Albert Akin laid the 
foundations of his fortune ; and the issue 
has so far justified his insight into the 
times. 

If it be said that he was a materialist, so 
was his century a matter-of-fact century. 
He was a practical religious man, and he 
was gratified to note in his old age, with an 
exaggeration of statement characteristic of 
him, that the visionaries who call them- 
selves spiritual were not doing very well, 
and to express his triumphant belief that 
his ideas for the future were practical, were 
prevailing over others and would conquer in 
the end. If it be said that he loved money, 
I will say, instead of disputing the state- 
ment, as I might well do, that the nine- 
teenth century was a time in which money, 
the elastic, democratic leveller of powers 
and pretensions, came to its place and its 
era. I have called Albert Akin a seer; and 
he saw aright in looking into the times as 
money-loving. 

18 



It would however have been small honor 
to have been a seer, and merely to have 
profited by his insight into the times. We 
praise him because he sympathized with 
the literary and religious spirit of the times, 
as w^ell as the financial. Twenty years ago 
he laid the foundations of a library, of a 
church and of a school on this Hill, upon 
which the superstructure has been only in 
part built. One observes in that endow- 
ment, generously and increasingly sup- 
ported, the same spirit as animates Andrew 
Carnegie. In his religious ideas the same 
principles of union and simplicity which 
have appeared in the work of every real 
leader of the times, from Philips Brooks to 
Dwight ly. Moody. 

This insight of Mr. Akin's was exem- 
plified in his ability to work with others, in 
fact in his always working with others. 
In speaking of his founding the library, 
the church and the Conference, I am not 
forgetting but commemorating the fact that 
he took this action with his neighbors, that 
it was initiated by them and taken up by 
him ; but I recall that he never claim.ed the 
honor of initiating, he only upheld. After 
the novelty had passed aw'ay from enter- 
prises for others, he was still at work sup- 
porting, administering and nourishing. 
In this too he took great joy. It passed 
into a vSaying that when he could no longer 
manage the Hotel he would die. He was 
content to administer, grateful for original 
ideas, and for pioneer action ; and was able 
to seize upon it and make it available. 

This came out in the formation of the 

19 



Hotel project, which he recounted as the 
result of a conversation between himself, 
Admiral Worden and Mr. William B. 
Wheeler. The problem was to provide for 
the entertainment of summer guests here 
on the Hill ; the outcome was the Mizzen- 
top Hotel, named by the Admiral, in- 
fluenced strongly from the first by Mr. 
Wheeler, owned later by Mr. Akin alone 
and deeded to Akin Hall Association be- 
fore his death. 

Another illustration was the movement 
in the community in 1895 to provide a 
house for the minister, who was in course 
of living in four houses in two years. The 
ladies of the Hill determined that there 
should be a Manse, and in one summer 
raised five hundred dollars for it, chiefly 
by a Fair held on the grounds of Mr. 
Wheeler. Mr. Akin was much exercised 
by this and anxious as to its effect upon 
the Akin Hall project, which provided for a 
stone house in the stone library for the 
minister. Finally he stepped forth, pro- 
posed, upon Mr. Wheeler's suggestion, the 
erection of the present manse, a frame 
.structure ; declared his intention of chang- 
ing his plans for the library accordingly, 
asked the minister to hand in his sugges- 
tions as to the architecture of the Manse, 
and upon plans sketched by William 
Osborn, went about building it at once. 
The ladies, being deprived thus of a great 
task and burden, spent their fund in fur- 
nishing the house. 

Precisely of the same sort was the start 
of the Akin Hall I^ibrary. The residents 

20 



of the Hill, about 1880, assembled and de- 
cided to raise money for a library, and did 
so, creating in two summers, by great 
bazaars, a fund of a thousand dollars. Mr. 
Akin was, however, the sustainer of that 
which others originated. 

This Quaker Hill Conference was indeed 
founded by Mr. Akin, and on this wise. 
The idea was born in 1893 in Miss Mona- 
han's house, and had long been cherished 
by her. It was kept until a suitable time, 
and proposed b}^ the present writer in the 
winter of 1899, to those at that time 
present on the Hill. From them was re- 
ceived enough encouragement, in the form 
of promises of money and entertainment 
to warrant a further consideration of the 
proposal. iVt the second discussion Miss 
Teale was present and Miss Cornelia Tay- 
lor. Miss Teale suggested that Miss Mon- 
ahan be allowed to entertain all the guests 
at Hill Hope. Miss Ta^-lor reported later 
that she had presented the project to Mr. 
Akin and he had promised to supply all 
the money that we might need. These 
two generous promises, iDcing kept to the 
full, with larger gifts every year, the Con- 
ference has been made an assured success. 
It must not be forgotten that it first took 
root in the generous interest of many of 
the neighbors of its founder. 

I conceive that in mentioning this power 
and habit of Mr. Akin's by which he ap- 
propriated the ideas of others, organized 
them and made them practical, I am, in- 
stead of detracting from his credit, adding 
to it. A man can be honored only for 

21 



what he is, and Mr. Akin was an adminis- 
trator. It is enough to say that without 
his loyal management most of the work of 
which he was the leader would never have 
been done or at least never have been 
continued. He might well have had 
as his motto, these words upon the arms of 
William of Orange, "I will maintain." 

Mr. Akin gave those with w^hom he was 
associated large liberty and expected them 
to use it, holding them responsible for suc- 
cess or failure. To each of the men in his 
employ he gave broad discretionary powers 
and to the head of every one of the enter- 
prises with which he was concerned he 
gave the same liberal range of initiative. 
He was an ideal trustee for a church, for 
he gave the minister, so long as the church 
should be largely successful, entire liberty 
of action, and generous support. He was 
a good proprietor for a hotel, for he acted 
upon the judgement of his manager. He 
was a good owner of an estate for he gave 
his farmer a fairly free hand. It was very 
seldom that he failed to support his 
subordinates in such a position, and then in 
some small matter only. Two instances of 
this loyalty to his associates may be cited. 
The first is the fact that, inasmuch as the 
minister at Akin Hall was usually a tem- 
perance man, and an advocate of aggres- 
sive methods against the illegal sale of in- 
toxicants, Mr. Akin, who was neither in 
belief nor practice an abstainer, gave hearty 
and generous support to the cause of local 
option in the town of Pawling. 

The other was the creation and manag- 

22 



meut of the golf links on the Hill. The 
game of golf was hardly one in which a 
nonagenarian with no use of his legs 
could be expected to be interested, but 
the laying out of the links had only to be 
proposed by Mr. Howe and it was done. 
Done by Mr. Akin, and carried on by him 
year after year with undiminished interest, 
and generous loyalty. It is true it was a 
matter of business, but there are men 
whose years are less than ninety who can- 
not see a bu.siness opportunity of this sort. 
This centenarian who in a hundred years 
amassed a fortune gave younger men les- 
sons in his last decade in boldness and en- 
terprise, and in respect for the judgment 
of others besides himself. 

He was not an inventor, not a promoter, but 
he was a seer — by no means the least thing 
a man may be on this earth. To know 
facts, to live by them, to give one's self to 
them, and to have the courage to make all 
the sacrifices and brave all the risks in- 
volved in facts — these and more are in- 
volved in being able to see facts. Seers 
are few on earth, because men, in order to 
see, must also do and dare and venture, 
alwa^^s along true lines : and they who will 
not, and do not, they see not. In the 
midst of a generation of snobs and cow- 
ards and time-servers, talking cant and be- 
lieving lies and worshipping painted ikons, 
Albert Akin saw things as they were, for 
the best part of one hundred years : and 
of all those about him he was master. In 
his own family and neighborhood he was 
king. 

23 



When Mr. Akin was about sixty years 
of age, he bought a residence in New 
York, and went there to Hve in the winters. 
He had as a neighbor a Quaker preacher 
named Wright, who was accustomed to 
come to Oblong Meeting in the course of 
the year. With him Mr. Akin had many 
conversations on matters of duty and wor- 
ship, and became engaged with him and 
others in the foundation of the Societ}^ for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, as 
well as in other charitable enterprises. 

He began also to attend the Oblong 
Meeting in the summers, though the Sun- 
day meetings were not at that time largely 
attended. He would sit through the meet- 
ing however ; and it is characteristic of 
the impression that he made upon men's 
minds that his friends slyly hinted, in re- 
gard to his habit of talking to himself, that 
during the long silence he was thinking 
more of Wall Street than of the silent men 
and gray walls around him. 

Later, when his residence was at Fifty- 
sixth Street he became the fast friend and 
devoted admirer of Dr. John Hall, who 
used often to call upon him. For years 
Mr. Akin was carried into Dr. Hall's 
Church ; but after Dr. Hall died, and 
even before, he had ceased from that cus- 
tom. 

The growth of the church on Quaker 
Hill , under the leadership of Mr. and Mrs. 
WilHam B. Wheeler and Miss Margaret B. 
Monahan took strong hold on Mr. Akin's 
heart, and exerted over no one a more vital 
influence than on this old man. The influ- 

24 



ence of Miss Monahan's character and 
leadership in good works was very great in 
his last years. Like every other resident of 
Quaker Hill he was interested in Hill Hope 
and eagerly absorbed its spirit. 

Approaching the topic of the religious 
life of this strong man, I am aware that 
there are who would think such a man es- 
sentially irreligious. I am not in position 
to label men for eternity, and am happily 
excused from judging their souls. I was 
the pastor however of Christ Church when 
Mr. Akin applied for membership in it, 
and may be permitted to record the events 
and impressions as they occurred. Mr. 
Akin was a devout worshipper, and fer- 
vently^ interested in a sermon. His views 
were rather those that regard religion as a 
kingdom than as a private possession; he 
thought more of the social than of the per- 
sonal aspects of Christianit}'. He believed 
in that religion which draws people together, 
and therefore rejoiced to see Akin Hall 
full of people. He used to come at the 
time the first children arrived for the Sun- 
day-School and to w^ait till the last wor- 
shipper had departed from church. He 
saw and heard ever^^thing though almost 
blind and deaf; and he was disappointed if 
people did not greet him. He often sent 
his faithful Michael Gillen to ask one or 
another, " Why don't you come and speak 
tome?" He loved his neighbors and de- 
lighted in their approval of the enterprise 
he had founded. In this he w^as perfectly 
democratic, and seemed as much pleased at 
the presence in church of a remote farmer, 

25 



as at the attendance of a man from Fifth 
Avenue. More so in fact, for he reaHzed 
that the farmer would make the church his 
home and the millionaire made it only a 
chapel of ease. 

He took great interest in the formation 
of a church here in 1895; a^<i especially in 
the fact that the manner of the church, 
formed b}^ others than himself, was closely 
in harmony with the ideal for the worship 
in Akin Hall which he had steadfastly 
proclaimed. It was undenominational, 
simply Christian. With all his willingness 
to accept the ideas of others, he never for 
a moment yielded to the possibility of a de- 
nominational tendency being given to the 
work in Akin Hall. It must not be Pres- 
byterian, Episcopalian, Quaker, Baptist, 
Methodist, or anything but Christian. He 
was as unwilling to have one as another of 
these names become dominant. As the 
minister was Presbyterian, there came times 
when, without due cause, he took alarm 
and inquired very sharply as to the signifi- 
cance of some certain speaker known as a 
Presbyterian. He had among his admired 
friends John Hall and later Robert S. 
MacArthur, the one Presbyterian and the 
other Baptist. He believed in men, but 
for all his regarding Christianity as a king- 
dom, he refused to recognize that kingdom 
in any existing bod}^ of Christians. 

When Christ's Church, Quaker Hill, had 
been one year formed, and had both settled 
the question as to its permanency and de- 
termined the peculiarities of its organiza- 
tion, Mr. Akin proposed to join it. His 

26 



confession was received b}^ the Committee, 
the same as that of an}' other person; ex- 
cept that in answer to the question as to 
his desire for baptism, he replied that he 
did not desire it. Two other persons had 
been received before him, without baptism, 
so he was also received. Yet he had before 
and after that time gladly and humbly par- 
taken of the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper. He never cared to be consistently- 
theological. His manner and demeanor 
towards things devoted to God was at all 
times reverent and humble. His member- 
ship in the church was that of a devout and 
quiet believer. He always justified the 
remark of one who, commenting on the 
strange phenomenon of a man past ninety 
joining the church, said, " Well, one thing 
is sure; that old man has a great deal of 
the grace of God in his heart ' ' 

One scene will always remain in the 
memories of those who saw it. The Annual 
Meeting of the church in 1899 was preceded 
by a supper, the tables arranged in the 
Hall in shape of a letter U. At the 
right and left of the minister sat the two 
revered and beloved members of the con- 
gregation, Albert Akin and Anne Hayes. 
On around the table sat almost every per- 
son, or a member from every family, living 
on the Hill at that time. A quietness and 
solemnity was over all, and we spoke in 
lower tones as at a sacrament. A spirit of 
love for one another was in every heart, 
and the consciousness of God's presence. 
It was Albert Akin's part in such scenes 
as that, and his entering into the spirit of 

27 



them, that made devout men love him. 

" The king is dead," said one, when the 
news came that he had passed away; " the 
man on whom we all unconsciously leaned, 
and whom we none of us thought of dis- 
obeying, though only his personality held 
us to allegiance, is gone from us. And I 
for one, feel that I have lost a dear friend." 
This sentence states the case for Quaker 
Hill. This man, between ninety and a 
hundred years of age, was able by tact and 
a strong, steadfast will, and by wise use of 
the powers he had, to rule all about him, 
to gather more friends and attach them to 
himself, and to maintain till his hundreth 
year the first place among them. 

This thing cannot be done with money, 
or with social or official position ; both of 
which are to them who possess them bur- 
dens to be borne rather than implements 
to be wielded. Only the master can use 
them. What was it that gave Albert Akin, 
in the last years of his life the universal 
respect of men who knew him, and the 
affection of many devoted friends who could 
not claim long acquaintance ? 

Well, first of all, it was his great age; 
for a hundred j^ears fascinate the mind of 
men. But his hundred years formed only 
the background for the enlivening traits 
which won men's hearts. 

He was a brave man, bold and daring. 
I have heard that at times he knew how to 
invest his money boldly. He loved horses, 
and alwaj^s wished to drive a fast and 
spirited one. Mr. Albro Akin has told me 
that his earliest remembrances of his uncle 

28 



show him leaning on a cane or crutch; yet 
one of the earliest shows him holding the 
leading rope of a spirited horse which pas- 
tured in the grass of the orchard. Sudden- 
ly the horse snuffing the liberty of the open 
field began to pull and caper about, trying 
to get away, to graze and run untethered ; 
but the old man, then an invalid and al- 
most a cripple, braced himself on his crut- 
ches and held the rope without an instant's 
hesitation, and effectually restrained the 
plunging animal. 

One recalls in this connection his over- 
sight of the digging and blasting of the 
well at the Manse. He would watch the 
men at work from his carriage, then when 
the blast was set, would point his timid 
horse's nose toward home — he drove for 
himself still at that time, and would get 
ready for the report, saying "I can ride as 
fast as she can run!" Then after the re- 
port and the runaway, he drove quietly 
back for the next inspection. 

Twice, after he was ninety-four he broke 
his leg, from the effects of driving his own 
horse. After that, to his own great dis- 
gust, he could no longer drive. I think 
that for him the beginning of the end came 
at that time. 

There was a touching simplicity which 
grew upon him, in his last years, though 
his masterful ways never abated. He 
clung to the friends he had made, and 
showed a dependence upon affection and 
tendance which he had not before exhib- 
ited. He came to church when he could 
no longer hear ; and he desired his friends 

29 



to greet him though he could not see their 
faces. 

Mr. Akin was a lover of young people. 
He gave those who came near him an ad- 
vantage in his confidence and affection 
which he denied to older persons. Especi- 
ally he desired their affection, and gave it 
fully in return. He delighted in fresh and 
new ideas and proposals, and had great 
pleasure in activity, even though he was 
unable to keep up with it. The incident 
will not soon be forgotten of last year's 
Sunday school picnic, He had bought and 
placed on Hammersley I^ake a naphtha 
launch, which he on that day exhibited to 
the children of Akin Hall Sunday school. 
He had himself carried and placed in the 
end seat, and then he called to all persons 
far and near to come and have a ride. 
Four times he rode around the lake, each 
time taking a new load of guests ; until 
the caretaker of the launch, fearing that 
something might happen to the new and 
untried boat, while the old man was in it, 
insisted on retiring it from service, and so 
Mr. Akin had to return to his carriage. 
That day's doings gave him the keenest 
pleasure, and he told the story over and 
over to his friends. Needless to say that 
the children and their parents told it even 
more industriously. 

Mr. Akin had also the faculty of 
dramatic statement and action. He de- 
lighted to do things that would make men 
talk. He had all the talent of a natural 
leader for commanding popular applause. 
For instance, once within the last ten years, 

30 



he had two horses hitched together that 
had never been so yoked, and drove them 
himself to the village. Then when one of 
them showed undue spirit, he drove up in 
front of the bank and gave the refractory 
animal a good whipping. When his leg 
was broken in his ninety-fifth year, he made 
the remark that " It would heal all right ; 
but if he had been an older man, it might 
have been a bad break." This was quoted 
in every farm house for ten miles around. 
It has seemed to me that Mr. Akin was 
an almost perfect type of the truest form 
of philantrophy. His attitude toward the 
poor, without his intending to have any 
attitude, became the most useful and ac- 
ceptable by which to connect the life of the 
rich with that of the poor. He did not 
coddle them, he did not give much charit}^ 
gave in fact none at all of himself. He 
had no especial interest in poor men be- 
cause they were poor. But he gave to all 
men work, paid them promptly good 
wages, superintended the work himself, 
and rewarded faithful service with faithful 
employment. The result was that he had 
in his employ for many years the same per- 
sons ; and all who labored, whether for him 
or for others, respected him and mourned 
his death. He was prompt and fair with 
his employees and just with his ser\'ants. 
Whatever allowance must be made for his 
faults of hardness in other matters, let it 
be remembered that his last words were for 
the poor for whom he would have done 
more ; and his truest mourners were the 
poor, who had known him best. 

31 



Albert Akin's work was at his death 
complete. Not ended, not even fully de- 
veloped ; but inaugurated, launched on its 
course and ready to do service in the 
world. His work was that of bringing 
this community through the time of change 
from the past which is gone forever, to the 
present, and the future so rapidly dawning 
upon our eyes. He not only himself dur- 
ing his long life employed many men and 
women in useful occupations, but he found- 
ed influential institutions which have done 
untold good and exerted great indirect in- 
fluences for the future of Quaker Hill. 
Of these none has come to so perfect de- 
velopment as has the Hotel, In it one 
can see what the sagacity of this old man 
has done and is doing for Quaker Hill. 
It has brought to the Hill many persons of 
means, who have come to know and love 
it ; by its wise and conservative manage- 
ment it has made a good selection of sum- 
mer residents, and it has made the Hill 
known to many who would never otherwise 
have known it. It has also made the Hill 
a summer boarding settlement. Not that 
this was not alread}^ true when the Hotel 
was founded ; but it has been increased, 
and the tone of the business raised by the 
Hotel. 

In the same wa}^ Akin Hall has had in- 
fluence in selecting residents of the Hill, 
transient and permanent. It has given to 
the neighborhood a higher tone and put 
upon all matters a better air. It has freed 
the Hotel management, and that of the 
whole place, from the possible charge of 

32 



commercialism, and given the life here an 
air of high-minded, literary and artistic 
interest that it could from no other source 
have gained. 

The Church, in the same way, and the 
Conference, have entered into the life of the 
place, have taken root in the affections of 
ever>'one and have gained with the years of 
Mr. Akin's fostering the momentum W'hicli 
will carry them far. These institutions 
are here. They are grounded in the affec- 
tions of the neighborhood. The}- mean 
the most to every resident on the Hill, of 
all the things outside of their own houses. 
They would not be permitted to die, be- 
cause the communit}^ loves them: Mr. 
Akin ordered his benevolence during his 
life so carefully by the popular demand, 
and so obediently followed the leadings of 
providence and of human usefulness, that 
at his death the group of institutions which 
go b}' his name, Library, Church, Confer- 
ence, Hotel, are all in full activity. It is 
eas}^ for them to be made to live, and it 
would go against the will of the whole 
Quaker Hill family for any one of them 
to die. They are founded upon vital 
needs, and have taken hold on popular as 
well as upon select approval. They will 
live. God grant to them each and all the 
success that he ferv^ently desired for them. 

I said at the beginning that Albert Akin 
was an aristocrat. In the strict as well as 
the true sense of that word, he was in- 
deed an aristocrat. He was born to a 
position of means and leisure. What the 
time of his birth offered of influence and 

33 



wealth and land, as well as fair educa- 
tion, he had. He took during his life the 
only line of action for an aristocrat. He 
stood in the only relation possible for a 
man who would rule his fellows as their 
better. He did not forget that " Noblesse 
Oblige." The responsibilities of wealth 
and influence he never failed to use. He 
lived simply himself, and forbade ostenta- 
tion in his family ; but he made his money 
work. He thought for the mass of men, 
had his philosophy of life for them, and 
he had his broad and generous plans for 
them. In his will and in Akin Hall he 
provided for their helping ; and during his 
life, for twenty years, he made that insti- 
tution his care and pride, doing for it what 
he did for no other interest. He gave not 
only in the way some do, leaving at his 
death what he could not carry with him ; 
but during his life he gave as generously 
as the institution required, and till the end 
he was never hesitant about his gifts to this 
institution which was to carry on his work. 

This it is to be an aristocrat ; to serve 
others, and thus to rule them. To think 
for them, and to think better than they 
can ; to plan for them, and to have the 
better foresight than they have ; and to 
govern them by benefits conferred so wisely 
and with such dignity that they feel no 
condescension, and resent no intrusion. 
This was the only kind of aristocrat the 
Nineteenth Century would endure. 

I am sure also, from my knowledge of 
his neighbors' hearts, that he was followed 
to the grave with the affection of all who 

34 



knew him. Like the true aristocrat, and 
benefactor of men, his well-doing and lead- 
ership, though not attended with any arts 
of seeking public favor, brought him at his 
death the love of the poor. They whom 
the poor love are sure of the blessing and 
reward that God has for them who love 
him. 



35 



